If you just can’t let XP go, there is a hack that allows you to continue to get patches until 2019. While the hack is easy, you might want to hold off on applying it and assume that your outdated OS won’t be protected against vulnerabilities.

Hack XP for Five Years of Patches

The hack is easy enough to implement by changing a value in the Registry in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\WPA\PosReady. Quite simply, this hack tricks Microsoft Update in XP to continue to providing updates for it. I am not going to get into actually actually doing the hack for a couple of reasons. First, you can find it all over by doing a simple Google search. And secondly, according to Microsoft, it might not be all it’s cracked up to be, and the company warns against it.

Microsoft Advising Against Hack

Microsoft learned about the popularity of this hack and issued the following statement to ZDNet:

We recently became aware of a hack that purportedly aims to provide security updates to Windows XP customers. The security updates that could be installed are intended for Windows Embedded and Windows Server 2003 customers and do not fully protect Windows XP customers. Windows XP customers also run a significant risk of functionality issues with their machines if they install these updates, as they are not tested against Windows XP. The best way for Windows XP customers to protect their systems is to upgrade to a more modern operating system, like Windows 7 or Windows 8.1.

Microsoft ended support for XP this year, sans a recent update for an IE vulnerability. You might think this hack will provide security updates moving forward, and that’s better than none. However, as Microsoft states, it can end up making your system unstable as they aren’t meant for the consumer version of XP. If you are still a “hanger on” to XP, make sure to check out my article: Windows XP is About to Die, Now What which provides you will several things you can graduate to.

And if you are still using XP on your primary computer, it’s just time to bite the bullet and upgrade to Windows 7 or 8.1. That’s the best advice we can give, since the newer versions are inherently more secure anyway.

Also, if you are going to upgrade to a newer version of Windows, but haven’t yet done it. Check out these articles to help you through the process: